BUSINESS: Research + Stats Snapchat’s Appeal to Teens and Young Adults Drives Continued User Engagement By Staff Friday, November 2, 2018 11:51 AM This year, 84.8 million people in the U.S.—or about one-quarter of the population—will use Snapchat. This is a 7.1 percent increase compared with 2017, according to eMarketer estimates. At its current growth rate, Snapchat will grow faster than two other popular social channels, Facebook and Twitter. Those two channels are expected to see user counts increase just 0.9 percent in 2018, according to eMarketer. However, Instagram, another popular social media channel, is expected to show a 13.1 percent increase in user rates.The shifting appeal of these popular social media channels is a consideration for marketers, who are seeking to allocate their budgets in the most efficient manner. Snapchat’s appeal to the teen and young adult demographics, along with its creative ad offerings, continue to be its strongest features, according to Marketer. “Snapchat also has been able to avoid most of the negative attention that Facebook and Twitter have received over fake news, election meddling and other controversies,” eMarketer noted. Click here to read the eMarketer report “Snapchat and Twitter 2018.” “Monthly users are still growing even though Snapchat reported a decline in daily users in [the second quarter]," according to eMarketer senior forecast analyst Chris Bendtsen. "Engagement among users may be down—in large part due to the unpopular redesign from earlier this year—but new users are still coming to the platform," he added.Looking ahead, eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson notes that a major challenge to Snapchat’s growth will be Instagram, in particular the “Stories” feature. “Instagram says 400 million people per day now use Stories. That’s more than double Snapchat’s worldwide daily active user base," Aho Williamson writes in the report, Snapchat and Twitter 2018.